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Ok, I'm pretty close to giving up on this website thing... I am an extreme beginner at all of this and making my site jive with that evil Netscape browser is killing me! I've tried to follow all of the "Good Web Designer" points that I've heard about from you "veterans", but I can't get my site to look right in Netscape! I love using layers- they are easy to move around and you can overlap them when needed. You can't do that with tables! Overlapping layers is a necessity on my site and Netscape demolishes them! Also- why does Netscape not display my sidebar javascript navigation???

Layers are extremely new and unsupported by browsers, so you can expect problems there. And since you didn't actually write that navigational bar, you might want to look at the site where you go it and see what browser(s) it was written for. Scripts like that usually need to versions for each browser.

Sorry, if I was harsh but if your going to build websites there are some basics you must learn.

This includes the capabilities of at least the two major browsers on the three major platforms (Windows, Mac, and Linux).

It includes a basic working knowledge of the technologies you wish to implement.

It includes a basic working knowledge of how to integrate those technologies.

Now you don't have to know every tag, attribute, property or scripting command but you should at least know where you can look them up. The face of the Internet will be changing over the next few years and things will get a lot worse before they get better, but if you know how things work, what the standards are, and what the different technologies do and how they work together then you have a chance of designing great sites. If you rely on programs to create your sites for you then you rely on outdated technology where things can and do change overnight. If you rely on human ingenuity and mind power then you can keep up.

Layers are new? The &lt;div&gt; tag has been around since 1996 and its been scriptable since 1997, not exactly new if you ask me. Do not use &lt;layer&gt; or &lt;ilayer&gt; which are netscape specific. Do not use the Iframe tags which is IE Specific currently, though netscape 6 should support this tag. If you are going to use layers then you need to read a book or a series of online tutorials about DHTML, cross-browser scripting and the DOM in each browser. You can find loads of information about this at www.bratta.com under scripts/tutorials, at www.htmlguru.com especially his curious eye tutorial and at both Microsoft's and Netscape's sites.

Obviously neither of you have bothered to look at the reviews of Netscape 6 PR1 or looked at the program. This new browser will be able to run circles around IE 5 with its support for the 5 key W3C standards. Not only can it support everything IE5 does including the Iframe tag but it will be able to do more because of its standards support.

first off let me say that i understand your frustration however,i think the bottom line you have to ask yourself when designing and building a site is what is the purpose of the site and who is going to be my audiance.

so, you basically have one of two choices, either build the site to the lowest common denominator or do the extra scripting to accomadate your audiance.

kill netscape?
no offense, but that is about the dumbest thing I ever heard. Version 6 supports CSS better/more than IE and Version 6 should be better in many other aspects. Without Netscape there would be only one leading browser. Ie. Since I do not like IE, I would be stuck using a different more generic browser.

After examining your code and examining the original script, it can be seen that your missing code. This script requires a Netscape and a IE solution branch to work properly. While you fully copied the IE branch, you missed parts of the Netscape branch. There were also not more changes to compensate for that. In the IE branch the layer gets closed properly allowing all the other layers in your page to be formatted properly under the body tag. In the Netscape branch which requires the &lt;layer&gt; tag to work properly this opening layer for your menu doesn't get closed properly so all other layers become children of the menu and thus screws up your layout.

Fletch:
The beta for IE5.5 has been out for since January. It doesn't add any new support for the current standards all of which are at least a year old. In fact it goes backwards in regards to some standards to favor new IE only features.

Currently IE 5.0 is the most standards compliant browser available commercially. The Macintosh version is more compliant than the Windows version. IE 5.5 is less compliant than IE 5.0. Microsoft instead chose to concentrate on CSS behaviors, pop-up windows and other capabilities still under review by the W3C. All of which have competing technologies submitted that might get approved over Microsoft's Implementations. You can find out more about standards compliance at www.webstandards.org/.

You can't compare apples to vapor. Its hard enough comparing apples to apples and oranges to oranges in the world of Cyberspace. Unless Microsoft gets on the ball, AOL can gain the upperhand with Netscape 6 and a stream of other browsers that will likely follow on the mozilla engine. Of course if AOL does succeed they will end up proving that Microsoft does not have a monopoly on Internet browsers. If AOL switched its software to the Mozilla Engine instead of the IE Engine that would be 30-50 million people in the US alone changing browsers. Would swing the percentages back towards 50% Microsoft, 50% Netscape. Funny how one of the largest complainers of a Microsoft monopoly holds the keys to break it but willingly lets it live on.

While I'm a Netscape user I'm not so optimistic about success of v.6/mozilla. I think MS does a smart move away from dejure standards and because it currently has a bigger market share it will try to push their implementation as defacto standard. It's very hard now when there are millions of regular surfers for whom Internet=IE, to make people switch to other browser (especially when they don't know what browser is ) So I'm affraid that Mozilla will be something what linux is now - browser with lots of techie fans and not many among regular surfers who are the majority.

I admit: I'm a huge IE fan..I've never liked Netscape, but even I was excited when I heard about Netscape 6...however I ran the beta and was incredibly dissapointed. A lot of pages came out looking a bit strange, and everything loaded slowly (can't be my computer, I tried IE 5.0 after that and it went very smoothly)...it also opened slowly...I couldn't find one good thing about it.

I started on Netscape. It was great, but they slowed down a lot (until the ver.6, recently). No matter which one is better right now you still should code for both, you never know when things are going to change.

PLease note that betas are very disappointing pieces of software. It doesn't matter which company they come from. The commercial release of Netscape 6 is rumored to be 6 to 9 months away. A lot can happen in that time. As Temis sais you shouldn't code for any one browser. You should code for the accepted standards then make sure that your site looks ok in the major browsers.

Man do I hate to say this. I'm in love with the idea of a standards-compliant browser.

I am a true IE fan, if I didn't design websites I would never touch Netscape ever. I truly hate every version they've put out yet - except NS6p1. I have been dreaming of a day when I can design for a browser that will interpret HTML predictably, support all the approved standards and new tags, and just plain work.

Now I know all the other browsers aren't going to die out when NS6 rolls around, sometimes I wish they would - just have Microsoft develop new Web technology and submit it for acceptance, forget developing a browser. Actually what I want is an IE6 that's as compliant as NS6.

BTW I hate the interface/design for NS6.. it's just the engine that I love.

Oh...
I don't want to collaborate here how Netscape is better than EI and IE over Netscape (in some cases) - one thing is for sure - NS does not take bull for code (if you don't close your tags or forgot &lt;HTML&gt; tags for ex.).

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote/font><HR>BTW I hate the interface/design for NS6.. it's just the engine that I love.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Oh didn't you know that Netscape 6 is skin-able? Don't like the default interface you can design your own and not by using a complex language like C or C++ but by using HTML, some javascript and a little XUL.